


By Thy Grace

by Zaxal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Post-Seine, Pre-Slash, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 11:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16743061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: Valjean could not feel pride at having saved Javert from mortal sin. Instead, he felt... pity.





	By Thy Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Commissioned by shawnhenryspencer/Parker.

Cosette slept soundly, the curls of yellow hair turned almost white by the moonlight glancing through her curtains. Valjean allowed himself the indulgence of watching her for a moment longer. His ward, his charge. His daughter, if he allowed himself the indulgence of thinking of her as such. She had grown too soon when he had so much more he needed to tell her. He could only pray that he had done enough to lead her to a happier life. He could only pray that her innocence would be protected for a while longer, even as he stepped back into the shadows that had long-ago claimed him.

If he was lucky, she wouldn't hear about his arrest. Let her think of this as him running away again. Let him be a coward rather than a criminal in her gentle eyes.

"Do you forgive me, Fantine?" he asked the night softly, and the night didn't answer.

It was fitting. As he had turned away from her cries for help, let her spurn his.

In this way, everything would come full circle.

A sheet of paper and a pen, ink formed ribbons as he scrawled a final message to Cosette. Instructions, allowances. Sell the candlesticks, if she could find someone to buy them. Be brave in the face of the oncoming storm. As long as his heart beat in his chest, it would be filled with love for her. So many pretty words, yet they did no justice to the true depths of his feelings.

He kept expecting a knock on the door, a sharp reminder that just outside, Javert waited, and in his wake would come a reminder of every sin that went unconfessed and unforgiven.

But there was only a still silence, a beat of rest before the inevitable crescendo.

Just as he signed his false name for the last time, he heard a voice.

_"Jean."_

The lamp that illuminated his final words to his beloved Cosette flickered as if somehow touched by the wind. Valjean stopped writing, listening again.

He had heard the voice, surely, though he could feel no strange presence in his home.

It was not Javert who spoke, for he never said Valjean's name with anything other than contempt, an accusation. But Valjean could think of no one else who knew him by that name who knew him now.

 _"Jean,"_ it said again as if calling to him. It spoke his name in the same fashion Valjean used for his prayers: reverent, earnest, and pleading to be heard and heeded.

Perhaps, in his younger days, Valjean could have ignored it. He could write it off as a fleeting fancy created by lack of sleep, by hunger, by pain. As he was now, the burden carried by Valjean's soul felt a kinship to that desperate voice, and it drove him to his feet and to the door.

"Who goes there?" he demanded, assuming that the dream would dissipate, or perhaps that Javert would open the door and end it himself when he heard Valjean on the other side. "Speak."

There was a sudden certainty in his bones that on the other side of his door was someone waiting. Not Javert whose presence Valjean could have identified had he been suddenly stricken blind and deaf but someone else stood just there, familiar in their manner yet so foreign that Valjean could not possibly name them.

He cracked open the door, the hinges creaking subtly as they always did, yet at that moment, they sounded so sharp and piercing that he wondered how Cosette could still sleep.

Beyond the door was an inky darkness stretching on to some distant horizon. There were a hundred things a man should feel when faced with something so impossible, yet Valjean felt none of them.

 _"Jean."_ The voice again, a siren's lullaby, tender and sweet and so close that he could feel the word hanging in the air. _"You may look."_

It answered an unspoken worry, and while gripping the door frame with one hand, he turned to look.

The room was the same as it had been before. His letter was laid on the table, the lamplight flickering low. He heard a soft breath, and slowly, as if rebuilding the scene from memory, he placed himself at the table, fountain pen sitting laid to the side as his body slumped over onto the table, pillowing his head with one hand.

As Valjean gasped, he saw the broad form of his back expand, and when he released that air, it sank down again.

_"Come. You are safe."_

"How?"

A laugh echoed from the portal, kind and warm and so familiar that it caused his chest to ache with the memory. _"You know the answer."_

Valjean tore his eyes from the rise and fall of his own body, facing into the darkness and, with a breath to steel himself, he stepped forward out of his home.

He expected the ground to feel like a regular floor or perhaps like ice, slick and impossible to navigate. Instead, it gave to the pressure of his feet, not so that he sank, but rather settled comfortably with each step.

The surface rippled with his walking, each step causing new rings to spread. The light of the stars overhead broke and reformed on the water's surface with each, and stretching into the distance, Valjean could no longer tell where the sky began, the sea of stars surrounding him in every direction.

"Is this what You would have me see?" Valjean mused, standing on top of the water and gazing skywards. Infinity had never felt so breathtakingly vast.

In it, Valjean could feel Him. The almighty and glorious God, who, in His mercy, had given Valjean love when the world had spurned him, had given him hope once allowed past the anger and hatred that Valjean had used to shield his soul.

In the face of such a sublime force, Valjean quaked to go to his knees, to pray as he had daily for most of his life, to recount and recant every act of thoughtlessness and cruelty so that God might see the good that lurked beneath the shadows he had carried and hidden in. Yet, he could not. God saw and He forgave and He urged Valjean onward until a shape appeared in the distance, a silhouette against the sky.

The water began to run beneath his feet, carrying him forward when he stopped walking. It went against the apparent current that swirled around him, rapids rushing, curling, crashing in every direction. As he drew closer, he could recognize a bridge though it stood alone, missing its frame of buildings and streets.

A stairway of water built itself up, and Valjean walked of his own free will until he was no longer standing on water but the bridge itself and standing almost face to face with the very man he'd feared dealing with earlier.

"Javert," Valjean said, but the man didn't seem to hear him.

He paced restlessly, long, lean body trembling with some unspoken energy. Valjean mused that perhaps he had gotten away again, somehow, to Javert's dismay. He found his eyes riveted to the scene as it played out, as Javert looked despairingly skyward, and the stars failed to reflect in his piercing, pale eyes. A howl of anguish tore itself from his throat, and Javert collapsed against the railing between him and the river.

His eyes, once turned down, did not rise again.

Valjean watched, pinned to the place in horror, as Javert, shaking, climbed atop the railing and stared into the churning waters below. 

Valjean could not have known what was coming. Given an eternity in this moment, the truth never would have crossed his mind.

It was unthinkable that Javert would close his eyes, tears glinting on his cheeks and fall forward.

It was unthinkable, and yet.

"Javert!" Valjean cried and ran to the railing, eyes moving over the river below in search of the Inspector.

He heard the sound of steps and turned to see Javert again, pacing as he had before, quaking with fright. "Javert?"

As Valjean spoke, the officer looked towards the sky, and Valjean could, here, see the tears already glistening in his eyes.

The final noise that punched through his lungs sounded like the final cries of a frightened animal, and Javert looked the part: as though he were caged and cornered, terrified and assaulted at all sides. Valjean looked for assailants, but there were none. Javert climbed on the railing, and Valjean tried to grab his arm onto to find that he could not.

Javert shook, agonized, and Valjean could see the fear writ across his face even as he closed his eyes and leaned forward, allowing gravity to finish the deed he began.

Valjean closed his own eyes against seeing the aftermath, unwilling to accept it, unable to witness such a gruesome and miserable end.

"Why?" he begged, but the voice of God remained silent as Javert began to pace again.

Here, below the comforting but vast canvas of sky, Valjean felt suddenly bereft and alone save for the shadow of the man beside him.

Jean Valjean's eyes opened.

\-----

His heart fluttered like a butterfly caught in a spider's web, frantic and desperate to live though it must already know the end was at hand. Part of him held on to hope that someone would stop him, would pass by and happen to speak to him, would grab him and pull him away.

He waited for an excuse, staring into the unforgiving rush of the Seine.

Suicide was a mortal sin, but had he done anything but sin in his entire life? Striving to be something useful, something good, all he had done was drag others into the dirt so he could climb on top of them. It wasn't a crime in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of God, he had only ever failed.

His prayers had gone unanswered and rightfully so. Justice had been meted out, and his sentence was this.

It wasn't a choice. It wasn't. Javert could no more have turned from the bridge, the river, the fall than any criminal led to the gallows. This was righteous. This was just. Yet, he trembled in fear, his weak soul unwilling to take that final step that was all he deserved.

His breath choked in the tightness of his throat, a sob echoing in his ears. If tears ran from his eyes, they didn't matter. How often had he stared at someone weeping and felt nothing? How often had he ignored pleas for help?

As he had failed to offer mercy, mercy could not be given to him.

He clenched his eyes closed, took another shaking breath, and leaned forward.

It didn't matter which force pulled him down: gravity, God, or the Devil Himself.

When he hit the water, he knew the deed was done. It cradled him in a cold embrace, a moment of reprieve before the current pulled him under, wrenching at his clothes and limbs. It dragged him down, deeper into darkness, as if the hands of the forsaken were finally pulling him to the hell to which he'd condemned them.

Yes, there were hands all over him, pulling so hard that he opened his mouth to cry out. The last of his air burst in a flurry of bubbles from his lips, and water flooded in its place. The darkness called to him, and Javert answered, allowing it to claim him without a fight.

\-----

Air flooded his lungs, his ribs sore from expelling the water he'd willingly taken in. Though his eyes were open, he could see nothing, his body on the brink of failure. His heart thumped weakly, willing him to live. "Let me die," he demanded of it, voice raw. Bile rose in his throat and he emptied his stomach, retching on the ground. He felt it burn in the rags of his throat. "Let me die," he gasped, nearly sobbing, "let me die." His hands, weak, grasped onto stone, and as he had plummeted from the bridge, let him _finish_ the forsaken work he'd begun.

Something grabbed him, warm, fire-brand hot even through his cold, wet clothes. Javert struggled, but he was no match against the strength that held him.

His eyes slipped closed and he curled towards the heat that surrounded him, shivering and hating that he did.

The rush in his ears gave way first, the faint ringing and weak thump of his heart replaced by the sounds of the Seine. So close. So close, he could still-

A voice murmured over him as the arms around him tightened. Javert's breathing shuddered, hands clawing at the broad form, trying to find purchase, trying to push away. Callused fingers smoothed his hair away from his face, gentle but unyielding.

The words being spoken might as well have been another language for all that he could understand them. Yet, feeling them form and sound in the man's chest gave him some peace, his breathing starting to even out save for the sweet agony that every new gasp brought.

He struggled again, only to hear clearly and gently scolding, "Javert."

He was known. Someone had seen him in his weakness, had somehow saved him. He couldn't fathom how. If they had not known him, Javert might have thought it a random act of kindness, someone who knew no better. But to know him and save him still? Impossible.

Impossible.

He cracked his eyes open again, flinching as light flooded in. The moon rested behind his savior's head, obscuring his face in softer shadows while bathing the outline of his body in soft, pale light. Javert found himself looking over the man's shoulders in search of wings, perhaps as white as clouds or black and tattered as his own heart.

"Javert," the man spoke again, his own voice barely a whisper, choking in his throat. Javert dragged his eyes back to the shadow of his face.

"What possible use do you have for me?"

It wasn't a question with an answer. "None."

"Then let me finish what I came to do-"

"No." The voice rumbled, heated intensity. The hands on him held him all the tighter as if to tear him apart for the suggestion.

Hell. This was Hell. He had drowned and been dragged to the depths, the lowest circle reserved for traitors. Judas and Lucifer and Javert.

"This is going to hurt," the devil warned and moved, holding him as if he were a child.

He was right. It hurt. Every part of him ached, agony arcing like lightning from his lungs outward. The gasp was caught by the pain and rendered mute, escaping only on a pained sob.

His eyes clenched shut, teeth grinding, but the pain was too much, and he was soon fading from consciousness. He thought to pray for safety, for help, only to laugh madly through the merciless pain.

Who would hear his prayers, now?

Had the angels and saints ever lent their ears to one who had never, in his ignorance, confessed to his true sins?

"Rest," his savior, his tormentor spoke.

"Why should the dead sleep?"

"You aren't dead yet."

Another laugh, a dry, bitter chuckle. "I am. I am surely in Hell."

His captor tripped, the pained jarring of his body causing Javert to finally fall limp, unconscious.

\-----

The night was restless for the both of them, though Valjean prayed that Javert would not remember it. All his fevered murmurings, the certainty that he had died, that he was now condemned. That it was deserved.

Valjean's feelings were muddied, unclear. He had wished no harm to Javert, but he couldn't deny that the man had made his life worse. His duty and nothing more – but that duty had often crossed his path and sent him fleeing like a fox from the hunt again.

He carefully undressed the Inspector and bundled him into dry clothes before tucking him quite firmly into his own bed. Then, he set about undoing the night's work. He burned the letter he'd written to Cosette, dried and changed himself, and cleaned up the mess the two of them had made while keeping his ears open.

Finally, some hours before dawn, Valjean heard a creak from his room. He returned to find Javert's face wrinkled with worry, his body twitching as he let loose pained gasps. The bed creaked again under the weight of his thrashing, and Valjean worriedly put a hand to his forehead, feeling the fever burning beneath his palm.

At his touch, Javert stilled, his eyes blinking open with the same unseeing stare he'd had after Valjean had pulled him from the river. Distraught, hurt. Empty. Valjean could think of nothing comforting to say, so he began to pray.

The sound of his voice seemed to reach Javert even if the words themselves didn't. His eyes drifted closed, breathing becoming less labored. He eased into a more restful sleep which didn't break as Valjean removed his hand. 

He left only long enough to bring a chair to the bedside where he continued to pray, trying to look past the pain Javert had brought into his life, trying to find the love of God in his soul for the man who had tried him more than any other single person.

Valjean fell asleep that way, half bent over, prayer on his lips.

\-----

"Papa?"

Cosette's voice pulled him out of the light doze. He sat up slowly, turning to face her. She looked between him and the bed, quite obviously distressed. Before she could speak, Valjean shook his head, holding up his palm to indicate that she should wait. He got to his feet and looked down again at Javert, the sunlight bleeding through the curtains warming his dark skin.

"Who is that?" Cosette asked, her voice softer as Valjean stepped into the hallway.

Valjean debated several versions of the truth before settling on one. "He's a man I've known for many years."

"Is he one of the ones that always has you jumping at shadows?"

"I do _not_ jump at-" Valjean began, only for the words to die at the hardened look Cosette gave him as if daring him to lie. With her sweet face, it was hard to imagine a fitting punishment that she could give him, but he didn't dare to try her. "Yes," he sighed.

Without a word, Cosette turned to go to the room itself, and Valjean's hand reached out to hold her back. "Cosette."

"He has hurt you," she said, staring up at him through her glasses with wet eyes. When he tugged her, she came close, allowing him to embrace her, hugging her tightly.

"I have been hurt many times throughout my life," Valjean murmured into her hair. "I have hurt others."

"Papa-"

"God is our judge. It is He who administers punishment or extends mercy. I believe it was His will that I should help Javert." Valjean drew slightly away, looking upon Cosette's fragile expression. He ran a thumb gently over her pale cheek. "All I ask... Is that you won't allow this to change your opinion of me."

"Of course I won't," Cosette said with all the warm confidence of someone who had never seen the depths of the dark.

He gave her a gentle smile. "I wish to continue watching over him."

"Fine," she said, some heat still in her voice. "Have you eaten anything?" The look on his face must have answered her question, and exasperation replaced her anger. "I will prepare breakfast for you, and for M. Javert."

"And for yourself," he insisted.

" _Yes_ , Papa," she said as if it had been blindingly obvious from the start. He fought off a bright smile, certain that such a grin didn't belong in these dire times. "Go," she said, and they broke apart to go their separate ways.

\-----

Javert did not stir for hours more. If not for the hitching rise and fall of his chest, Valjean might have feared him dead. The thought came to wake him, but every time he started to reach out, his mind was drawn back to the Seine.

 _"Let me die,"_ Javert had demanded, and if Valjean hadn't known the man for most of his life, he might have thought him crazed, unhinged, wild. Something deep beneath the surface had cracked – of course it had; there was no way Javert would have jumped otherwise. He had been sopping wet, trying to crawl back to the river, back to the end he'd chosen for himself.

Valjean could not feel pride at having saved Javert from mortal sin. Instead, he felt... pity. It would be unwanted; that he knew. Javert wouldn't want his sympathy. He wouldn't want to be looked down on. But the feeling stuck to his heart like a burr.

Javert's arm twitched. At some point when Valjean had fallen asleep, it had managed to escape the prison it had been tucked into. It lay across his blankets, seeming so much more fragile now that it wasn't hidden by a coat or gloves. Valjean didn't manage to think better of it before he found his hand covering Javert's own.

There was another shuddering inhale, then a hiss.

" _You._ "

\-----

At first, it seemed that he was doomed to relive the fall over and over again. He could feel the bridge beneath his feet slipping away or merely the sensation of falling. His eyes had been closed, but he could imagine the water rushing up to meet him, or perhaps pulling farther away until the bridge had been a cliff and the Seine the ocean miles below.

At times, Javert could grasp the truth. He could figure out that he was dreaming or had somehow come into another state where the rules that governed the waking world no longer applied. He tried to claw his way out of his own head, vague memories from the night before slipping through his grasp.

The voice. The face obscured in shadows. The moon creating a halo around the white hair, and the traitorous part of Javert that had wished it to be true. He had wished for mercy when he deserved none. He had, in his heart, tried to take back the vow he'd made on the bridge and intended to seal in his own blood.

There were moments, now, he swore he could still hear the voice. It faded in and out, and when it was there, the world seemed to still around him. No longer falling, no longer waiting for the impact that never seemed to come.

When it left again, the drowning feeling came back. The world was too much; _living_ was too much. Javert struggled to breathe around the choked feeling in his lungs, hysteria rising like the tide.

He clutched at the ground only to find it soft and warm, fingers twisting along its flat surface as he searched for something to grip. An even warmer presence – hot, burning hot – pressed into his hand, and Javert bit back a wordless cry as his eyes blinked heavily open.

But where there should have been the bridge, the river, or any number of torments that were waiting for him after, there was a modest room, and a man sitting at the bedside.

Javert knew him at once. A thousand moments and memories coalesced in the space of a second, giving shape to the man beside him. His savior now twice, from the martingale, from the river. From himself.

He hadn't realized he was holding his breath until he inhaled sharply, the pain in his ribs making him hiss.

" _You_ ," he said, unable to keep the accusation out of his voice.

He had left him here. Javert had walked away and allowed Valjean to live a free man, and he had _followed_ instead, had plunged into the river after him and pulled him out-

"You're awake," Valjean said, startled as he pulled his hand back to himself. Javert's fingers twitched again. He felt as though he were falling again, and he couldn't understand.

"Am I?" He wanted this illusion to end, this false kindness. Another trick, another betrayal of his mind, his heart, to steady himself after having lost everything.

"Yes, Javert."

There was something solemn in Valjean's expression, warmth in his dark eyes.

Javert couldn't _stand_ it.

"So I'm to believe you followed me to the bridge, and-"

Valjean nodded only once, and Javert's throat closed immediately.

"You should have kept walking." Javert's flat tone wavered, chest shuddering with the next breath that rattled in his lungs.

"Why?"

"It would have made your life so much better." To see him debased, to know that he would spend eternity rotting for all of his sins without the mercy of confession, forgiveness unearned... Vindictive, hateful; that's what people _were_ when they crawled out of the dirt and darkness.

"I wouldn't rest easier knowing that you were dead."

"You would have," Javert said. It wasn't an accusation; it was simply the truth. Javert was the last barrier between Valjean and unhindered freedom save for the scars which he had hidden so well that they were hardly a factor.

Valjean sighed, but rather than argue, he said, "Breakfast has long gone cold. You slept for quite a while." He stood slowly with a vague attempt to hide a pained wince. "I'll fetch you something-"

"Save the food for the living, Valjean."

His old name didn't seem to affect him at all. "You are quite living, Javert."

Javert didn't bother with a response, certain that Valjean must understand. Yet, it took a moment, their eyes locked and tension thickening the air before Valjean's brow wrinkled.

"Javert."

"You can say my name all you like. It changes nothing."

Valjean sank back into the chair, folding his hands as he rested his elbows on his knees, leaned forward. He seemed so weary from carrying the world's weight; Javert wondered how in God's name he hadn't dropped it. "Then I shall sit here until one of us perishes from old age."

"Then I'll get inventive." Javert eyed the cozy bed that Valjean had forsaken for him. "Shame to ruin the bed-"

"Stop talking," Valjean rumbled like distant thunder, his dark eyes seeming suddenly black.

Javert's breath caught again, but now that he had found a weakness, he wasn't going to let go. "With the barricades, you could easily avoid suspicion. No one would blink to find I'd died after escaping-"

"I said," Valjean's voice dropped yet another octave, and suddenly he was _there_ , his hands clutching the shirt Valjean must have given him along with the bed, the roof over his head, the air in his lungs that he wouldn't be breathing if Valjean hadn't stupidly saved him, "to stop talking."

Javert met his gaze, words crowding in his throat. It would be easy to continue to hurt him, to push him farther until violence came. Wasn't that in their nature, fangs hidden but ready to tear in at any moment?

Why hadn't he?

At Montreuil-sur-Mer, in that hospital room when there were no more pretenses between them, at the barricades?

If not to be a murderer, why step in when Javert had done the deed himself?

Why?

He didn't realize how fast his breathing had become, how his heart thundered in his ears until Valjean gently eased him back onto the pillow. "Forgive me for hurting you." Javert had no words to answer him. Valjean ran a hand back through his hair. "I'll take you to a doctor. When you are well, we can finish what we started. I am tired of running, lying – I will go where you bid me go. I only ask that you leave Cosette out of it."

Javert's head spun, too many thoughts piling on top of one another. "Cosette?"

"My ward." When Javert's look of confusion didn't fade, Valjean shook his head. "I asked for three days," he said with a sad smile. "Three days to bring her home, to see her mother before she passed, and you..."

The memory crashed into him, how he had killed her by telling her the truth of her 'savior', the man with whom she intended to trust her child. How, at the time, he had felt _nothing_ but the certainty that he was right.

God, had he been blind, cruel, petty. Even now, he looked back and knew that he never could have let Valjean go to fetch a child with only a promise to return. But that moment, when he had thoughtlessly told her of Valjean's sins, when he had, in her final moments, insisted on flinging mud onto the man with whom she had entrusted her hope – that had been the Devil's work if ever he moved through man.

He had murdered her.

"Javert," Valjean's hand was on his shoulder, his chair somehow closer. It seemed as though he were losing stretches of time to the despair eating him from the inside out. "You are not to blame."

Javert jerked his shoulder away, his whole body flinching from the kindness he didn't deserve. "I'm not going to turn you in." He held up a hand before Valjean could speak, could _thank_ him when Javert deserved nothing in the world less. "You made a mistake. Out of some... some strange madness, you chose to save me. There is no reason to punish you for that."

"It wasn't a mistake."

Javert scoffed, lips curving into a smile. "It was, Valjean. The sin has already been committed; I am Hell-bound whether it be today or tomorrow or years from now. My life... whatever remains of it, I _can't_ go back."

"Then don't," Valjean said with a steady earnestness that made Javert laugh despite the agony in his chest.

"Then what is the point of living?" He shook his head. "There is none-"

"Family," Valjean said suddenly. "Friends. There is... every sunrise that you are awake to greet, and every sunset you see off to rest. The _world_ is worth living for. That is the point."

"I do not belong in the world."

Valjean said nothing for long moments, and the two of them stewed in their own silence. "You remember the boys at the barricades?"

"The ones I was there to infiltrate, sabotage, and arrest, yes."

"I believe they are all, but one, dead."

Javert nodded, his fingers weakly curling in the bedding. Their faces ran together – he had never been good with faces – but the one that stood out…

"Gavroche?"

The stricken look on Valjean's face told him everything he needed to know. "The boy died before I released you."

Javert stopped listening as Valjean recounted the night. If only... If only he had escaped rather than surrendered, but what would that have changed? If he had told the Guard that a child was there, it wouldn't have stopped their march. If he had, in the first place, been the sort of man who would have told them in the hopes that it would spare one life, which he hadn't been. Perhaps if he had been the type of man willing to pick up a gun and die in a child's _place_ -

"Javert," Valjean said, pulling him out of his head. "Live for the ones who didn't."

Javert considered for a moment before speaking, though it was the same conclusion he'd reached at the start: "I doubt very much that they wanted me to live, Valjean."

Valjean's eyes crinkled as he smiled, laughed softly. Javert hissed again at the ache in his ribs.

"Just the same. They are not the only ones to die before their time."

Javert shook his head, staring down at his hands as they spread on the blanket. "It was my time."

"It wasn't," Valjean said with such infuriating confidence that Javert felt something deep inside him fracture, splintering apart as he gasped.

"How can you know that?!" He didn't bother to keep his voice from rising, the anger in it matching his desperation.

"Papa?" Came a soft voice from outside. Then, standing in the doorway, was an apparition, a vision of the woman he had killed. "I see M. Javert is awake." She smiled at Valjean before moving her gaze to Javert, narrowing into a squint. This, Javert wanted. Let her judge him. Let her find him lacking in all the ways Valjean hadn't. Let her see the truth while her kidnapper-no-savior-no- _father_ remained blind to it.

"He is," Valjean said almost sunnily, and Javert noticed from the corner of his eye that Cosette seemed to be aiming a similar look at Valjean as he was. "Give us a moment more."

"If you're sure," she turned her attention back to Javert, eyes holding meaningfully onto him for a few seconds longer.

"I am," Valjean said, and Cosette took her leave.

"Do you know why I was there?" he asked when he was certain they were alone again. "At the bridge."

"Luck," Javert supposed, though he couldn't say whose bad luck it was. Perhaps the both of them caused that unfortunate miracle.

"Providence," Valjean said evenly, his voice soft. "Divine Providence led me there."

Javert stared at him.

"I had a dream, a... vision. The Seine, the bridge, and you. God showed me- God, He showed me-" Valjean's hands shook as he clasped them before him as if in prayer.

"Impossible," Javert said. "Even I didn't know my intentions until I had climbed onto the railing. You must have followed me from here-"

"You knew before then," Valjean said with such a certainty that Javert could have choked on his words. "There was a moment. You looked towards the sky, as if asking Him for help. Before you climbed, you made such a terrible noise, as if you were on the brink of death." Valjean brought a shaking hand up to cover his mouth, and Javert could see the shine of tears in his eyes. "It was a horrible sound. I have heard many of its kind in my life. I saw it- heard all of it, almost a dozen times before I understood, and in God's infinite mercy, He gave me enough time to get to you."

Javert was speechless, so Valjean took a steadying breath. "God did not lead me to the bridge to watch you die. Since we are both alive, I can only assume it was His plan that we should both live."

The realization crashed into him. Javert said, " _You_ could have died."

Valjean shrugged. "I was willing. I already intended to leave behind everything I had left to live for," he said. His eyes subtly flicked towards the door.

"You," Javert growled, coughing when the sound hurt from his throat down.

"Easy," he murmured.

"Easy _nothing_. You intend to preach to me about things to live for and times to end, all the while you were prepared to let me drag you down?" It was God's mercy that shot his voice and kept him from speaking above a heated whisper.

"I had already agreed to let you take me in. What else did I have to lose?"

"I _left_ so you wouldn't have to lose _anything_."

"If it's my freedom or your soul, Javert, one is worth more than the other."

"I had forsaken my right to a soul a long time ago," he said.

"I disagree."

"Clearly," he said so sourly that Valjean held back another laugh. "The things I've done, the lives I've ruined - you can't forgive them. They aren't yours to forgive."

"I know. By that same measure, they aren't yours to condemn yourself for."

"I told you, I have already committed an unforgivable sin."

"If surviving the jump is a sin, then I am as damned as you."

Javert gritted his teeth, clenching his eyes closed. Falling, again. Falling into that abyss, only he had dragged another with him. If he had made up his mind sooner, if he had done the damn thing before Valjean could make it to him, if-

"But I don't think it was, Javert."

"My intent was to-"

"I know," Valjean said quickly. Javert could vaguely remember his pleas from the night before, how he had burdened Valjean by begging for death. The shame latched onto his heart. "My point is this: God sent me to you. If you had fallen from His grace, out of His love, why would He?"

Javert didn't have an answer. He doubled over, shuddering, the ache in his chest seeming to spread to the rest of him. It hurt, and just as he had thought this to be an inconvenient way to die, the pressure released all at once. His muddied thoughts cleared and in the place of a thousand sins, there was a blessed silence.

Valjean's hand steadied on his back, burning still, but Javert did not shrug it off. Let it burn him, so long as the rapid thumping of his heart steadied, so long as he could find the air to breathe.

God help him, he wanted to live.

His shoulders began to shake, a sob wracking through his body.

And before he could damn himself for this, for daring to cry when he had so often spurned cries for mercy from others, there was Valjean, sturdy and warm and speaking in the same soft voice as he sat on the edge of Javert's bed.

"It's all right, Javert. I'm here."

And though it was undeserved - perhaps the least deserved thing in the history of mankind besides condemning a man for the crime of starvation - it happened all the same.

"I'm here."


End file.
